Scientology is a new religious movement based on a system of beliefs, teachings, practices, and rituals that originated as philosophy in 1952 by author L. Ron Hubbard/
Early life
L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, to Harry Ross Hubbard (1886 - 1975) and Ledora May Waterbury, whom Harry had married in 1909. Hubbard was an Eagle Scout.
Harry was born "Henry August Wilson" in Fayette, Iowa but was orphaned as an infant and adopted by the Hubbards, a farming family of Fredericksburg, Iowa. Harry joined the United States Navy in 1904, leaving the service in 1908, then reenlisting in 1917 when the US declared war on Germany. He served in the Navy until 1946, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander in 1934.
His mother May was a feminist who had trained to become a high school teacher. Her father, Lafayette O. Waterbury (born 1864), was a veterinarian turned coal merchant. Her mother, Ida Corinne DeWolfe, was the daughter of affluent banker John DeWolfe. May's paternal grandfather Abram Waterbury was from the Catskill Mountains of New York and later headed West, employed as a veterinarian.
Education, pulp fiction, and military service
During the 1920s, L. Ron Hubbard traveled twice to the Far East to visit his parents during his father's posting to the United States Navy base on Guam.
Although he claimed to have graduated in civil engineering from The George Washington University as a nuclear physicist, university records show that he attended for only two years, was on academic probation, failed in physics, and dropped out in 1931. It is also claimed that he obtained his Ph.D from Sequoia University in California, which was later exposed as a mail-order diploma mill. [2] [3]
Hubbard next pursued writing, publishing many stories and novellas in pulp magazines during the 1930s.[4] He became a well-known author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and also published westerns and adventure stories. Critics often cite Final Blackout, set in a war-ravaged future Europe, and Fear, a psychological horror story, as the best examples of Hubbard's pulp fiction. His 1938 manuscript "Excalibur" contained many concepts and ideas that later turned up in Scientology.
Hubbard married Margaret "Polly" Grubb in 1933, with whom he fathered two children, L. Ron, Jr. (1934–1991) and Katherine May (born 1936). They lived in Bremerton, Washington during the late 1930s.
In June 1941, with war looming, Hubbard joined the United States Navy as a lieutenant junior grade. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was posted to Australia but was returned home, possibly after quarrelling with the US Naval Attaché, who rated him "unsatisfactory for any assignment". Subsequently, he was given command of the harbor protection vessel USS YP-422, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Again, he fell out with his superior officer, who rated him "not temperamentally fitted for independent command." These statements are in stark contrast with official Scientologist literature, which often portrays Hubbard as a brave and heroic figure during the war.
Hubbard was relieved of command and transferred to a naval school in Florida where he was trained in anti-submarine warfare. On graduating, he was given command of the newly built subchaser USS PC-815 (based in Astoria, Oregon). Shortly after taking the PC-815 on her maiden voyage from Astoria to San Diego, California, his crew detected what he believed to be two Japanese submarines near the mouth of the Columbia River. They spent the next three days bombarding the area with depth charges, after which Hubbard claimed at least one Japanese submarine had been sunk. A subsequent investigation by the US Navy concluded Hubbard's vessel had in fact been attacking a "known magnetic deposit" on the seabed, and postwar casualty assessments found no Japanese submarines had been anywhere near the Columbia River at the time.
Shortly after reaching San Diego, Hubbard ordered his crew to practice their gunnery by shelling one of the Coronado Islands, a small Mexican archipelago off the northwest coast of Baja California, in the belief it was uninhabited and belonged to the United States. Neither assumption was correct. The Mexican government complained and following a brief investigation, Hubbard was relieved of command with a sharp letter of admonition.
Most of Hubbard's wartime service was spent ashore in the continental United States. He was mustered out of the active service list in late 1945, and continued to draw disability pay for arthritis, bursitis, and conjunctivitis for years afterwards, long after he claimed to have discovered the secret of how to cure these ailments. In June 1947 the Navy attempted to promote him to Lieutenant Commander, but Hubbard appears not to have learned of this and so never accepted it; consequently he remained a Lieutenant. He resigned his commission in 1950.
In later years, Hubbard made a number of claims about his military record that are difficult to reconcile with the govenment's documentation of his service years. For example, Hubbard claimed he had sustained wounds "in combat on the island of Java" [6], but his service record offers no indication he came anywhere near Java. He also claimed to have received 21 medals and awards, including two Purple Hearts and a "Unit Citation". The Church of Scientology has circulated a US Navy notice of separation (a form numbered DD214, completed on leaving active duty) as evidence of Hubbard's wartime service. However, the US Navy's copy of Hubbard's DD214 is very different, listing a much more modest record. The Scientology version, signed by a nonexistent Lt. Cmdr. Howard D. Thompson, shows Hubbard being awarded medals that do not exist, boasts academic qualifications Hubbard did not earn, and places Hubbard in command of vessels not in the service of the US Navy. The Navy has noted "several inconsistencies exist between Mr. Hubbard's [purported] DD214 and the available facts."
And a little about Scientology:
Scientology
Main article: Scientology
In mid-1952, Hubbard expanded Dianetics into a secular philosophy which he called Scientology. Hubbard also married his third wife that year, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. With Mary Sue, Hubbard fathered four more children—Diana, Quentin, Suzette and Arthur—over the next six years.
In December 1953, Hubbard declared Scientology a religion and the first Church of Scientology was founded in Camden, New Jersey. He moved to England at about the same time, and during the remainder of the 1950s he supervised the growing organization from an office in London. In 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor near the Sussex town of East Grinstead, a Georgian manor house owned by the Maharajah of Jaipur. This became the world headquarters of Scientology.
Hubbard claimed to have conducted years of intensive research into the nature of human existence; to describe his findings, he developed an elaborate vocabulary with many newly coined terms [10]. He codified a set of "axioms" [11] and an "applied religious philosophy" that promised to improve the condition of the human spirit, which he called the "Thetan." The bulk of Scientology focuses on the "rehabilitation" of the thetan.
Hubbard's followers believed his "technology" gave them access to their past lives, the traumas of which led to failures in the present unless they were audited. By this time, Hubbard had introduced a biofeedback device to the auditing process, which he called a "Hubbard Electropsychometer" or "E-meter." It was invented in the 1940s by a chiropractor and Dianetics enthusiast named Volney Mathison. This machine, related to the electronic lie detectors of the time, is used by Scientologists in auditing to evaluate "mental masses" surrounding the thetan. These "masses" are claimed to impede the thetan from realizing its full potential.
Hubbard claimed a good deal of physical disease was psychosomatic, and one who, like himself, had attained the enlightened state of "clear" and become an "Operating Thetan" would be relatively disease free. According to biographers, Hubbard went to great lengths to suppress his recourse to modern medicine, attributing symptoms to attacks by malicious forces, both spiritual and earthly. Hubbard insisted humanity was imperiled by such forces, which were the result of negative memories (or "engrams") stored in the unconscious or "reactive" mind, some carried by the immortal thetans for billions of years. Thus, Hubbard claimed, the only possibility for spiritual salvation was a concerted effort to "clear the planet," that is, to bring the benefits of Scientology to all people everywhere, and attack all forces, social and spiritual, hostile to the interests of the movement.
Church members were expected to pay fixed donation rates for courses, auditing, books and E-meters, all of which proved very lucrative for the church, which purportedly paid emoluments directly to Hubbard and his family. However, Mr. Hubbard denied such emoluments many times in writing, proclaiming he never received any money from the church.
Hope this helps.
--Tiff
Comments
Great info; is he still alive and head of the organization? I can't bring myself to call it a 'church'
by Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog on May 6th, 2006
Plagiarism.
by Anonymous on November 26th, 2006